


The Watch

by fanfictiongreenirises



Series: Batman Bingo 2020 [7]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Good Bro Jason Todd, Hurt Dick Grayson, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Rated T For Jason Todd, hostage, no editing we typo like mne, sO APPARENTLY THAT'S A TAG THAT EXISTS BUT WHY IN THAT FORMAT SMH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22985140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanfictiongreenirises/pseuds/fanfictiongreenirises
Summary: Jason and Dick are held captive, with no way to escape and a gaping wound in need of medical attention.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Series: Batman Bingo 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622032
Comments: 23
Kudos: 525





	The Watch

**Author's Note:**

> For the "Hostage" square on my Batman Bingo card!! For @chestnutcats =D
> 
> FIRST BATFAM FIC OF AUTUMN LET'S SEE HOW THIS IMPACTS MY FICS
> 
> you can really tell what i look for in media by the fact that this fic's plot is built around the holes left there by the hurt/comfort. ~~and that i would've finished this a few days ago if i wasn't scrolling through websites wondering where the gaping wound should be.~~

THIS FANFICTION IS HOSTED ON **ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN** , WHERE YOU CAN READ IT FOR **FREE**. IF YOU’RE READING THIS ON A DIFFERENT WEBSITE, IT WAS POSTED THERE **WITHOUT** THE AUTHOR’S CONSENT.

Jason lifted his head with a groan, taking in the room he found himself in. It was dark, too dark to see properly, and his helmet had been taken. The domino mask he had underneath was just an ordinary domino mask, with none of the fun features that the rest of the Bats had.

The only thing Jason could hear was the sound of water dripping from a pipe somewhere. The concrete floor he lay on was dark and cold, but shivering sent spikes of pain through his skull.

Jason shifted upright, doing a mental scan of his body. His head hurt, and his ribs were definitely bruised, maybe even cracked, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage. The guys who had kidnapped him and—

Jason shot upright, sucking in a breath as the pounding in his head reached astronomical levels.

“N? he hissed. “You here?”

There was movement in the opposite corner of the room. Jason crawled forward – the ceiling was too low for him to stand properly, and hunching would do nothing for his ribs. This part of the room was much wetter than where he’d been. The water on the concrete seeped through to Jason’s knees.

Nightwing was slumped against the wall, head at an awkward angle. There was a smear of blood on the wall where his head had evidently slid across at some point.

“Nightwing,” Jason said again. “Man, wake up. Now is _not_ the fucking time.”

Jason couldn’t see Dick’s eyes from behind the milky lenses of the mask, but he could pick up when Nightwing’s breathing changed, hitching slightly as he become conscious.

“Ja—Hood?” Dick mumbled, drawing his sprawling limbs closer to his body. He winced as he sat upright. “Wha…”

“Hey, no, eyes open.” Jason slapped Dick’s face a couple times, resulting in minor movement of his head. Dick blinked blearily at him, and it was then that Jason realised that the liquid he’d been thinking of as water was actually _blood_. His hands had left bloody prints on Dick’s cheek.

Jason lifted a hand to Dick’s throat, checking his pulse. It was fast, and weaker than he wanted it to be, but stronger than giant blood pool warranted. There had to be water mixed in with it, and the thought sent slivers of relief down Jason’s spine. He could work with this.

“Where are you hit?” he said. His voice was sharper than it probably needed to be. Jason couldn’t see a thing in this light, and the blackness of the Nightwing suit did nothing to help. At least with the bright Robin costume, bloodstains had been obvious.

Dick looked at him, brow furrowed in bewilderment. “Hit?”

At least he was somewhat more coherent than before, even if that didn’t say much. “You’re sitting in a fucking puddle of blood.”

Dick glanced down at himself. “I’m fine?” he said, voice slurred slightly.

Jason yanked on his arm – one body part he was the _mostly_ sure didn’t have any holes in it – and tugged him upright. Dick let out a yelp, surprising even himself.

“Light?” he asked, breathing in deeply through his mouth.

Jason felt like an idiot. He patted through his pockets – something he should’ve done the second he woke up – and found a tiny glowstick still burrowed deep in his jacket. He lit it up, scattering shadows all over the room they could now see.

Dick looked green in the pale light. Jason shoved down memories of other green pools and green eyes, and forced himself to focus. He shone the stick down at Dick’s torso, trying to find what would probably be a gaping hole.

“Here,” he muttered, shoving the glowstick at Dick. “Hold this.”

Dick lifted a shaky hand to hold it where Jason had, while Jason lifted his suit to get to the singlet he had underneath it.

“You’re fucking lucky I layer,” he said. He didn’t know whether this was his way of trying to keep Dick awake, or if he just needed something to muffle the sound of that infernal dripping. “Or we’d have to try ripping Kevlar with our hands.”

Dick huffed a laugh, which then turned into a groan as Jason pressed his hand onto the wound in Dick’s side. Jason couldn’t see much, even now with the glowstick, but from what he could tell, the wound wasn’t going to be fatal. As long as they got more blood into Dick, that was, and soon.

From what he could tell, Dick had been bleeding out for a few hours. His skin was cold and clammy, and Jason didn’t like how he kept zoning out.

In order to have kept them out for so long meant that they’d been drugged at some point. Jason _hated_ being drugged, and their kidnappers would be feeling his wrath once he got out of this basement.

“Bet this is the last time you follow me on a case,” Jason said, tugging harder than strictly necessary on the makeshift bandages around Dick’s middle.

Dick’s breathing was the only thing that indicated he was feeling any sort of pain. Jason would’ve traded his second favourite gun for a more _conscious_ reaction. “Nah,” Dick panted. “Then who’d be here to provide the running commentary as we break out of this shithole?”

Jason scoffed. “Good luck doing that when you pass out from blood loss,” he said. Leaning back and taking the glowstick with him, he added, “Count to a thousand in your worst language.”

Dick’s hand scrambled beneath him as he struggled to follow Jason. The mixture of blood and water made splashing noises as he moved. Jason winced as bits flew at his face, missing his mask more than ever.

“Wait—” Dick coughed slightly.

“Sit the _fuck_ back down,” Jason snapped. “You’re only going to bleed out faster. And there’s only one glowstick, dumbass.”

“I can help,” Dick said. His voiced rose and fell with each breath. “Don’t… I can help.”

Jason blinked. “I’m not going to _leave_ you here,” he growled. “Start fucking counting. This place isn’t big enough to take longer than a couple hundred.”

Dick finally relented, and Jason heard the thump of his body hitting the wall. He began muttering in—

 _“_ Navajo?” Jason frowned, lifting his head up from examining the cracks in the concrete box they were in. He hadn’t expected that.

Dick shrugged. “Learned it on and off because of Roy, but my pronunciation’s shit.”

Jason snorted. “Yeah. It is.”

Dick continued, picking back up from where he’d stopped. Jason continued his scan of the perimeter of the room, the sinking feeling increasing the farther along he got.

Dick had gotten to a hundred and fifty when Jason began searching for a hatch in the roof instead. “The walls are solid,” he told Dick. “But we can cross out burying us alive in concrete.” They would’ve run out of air hours ago if that’d been the case.

“They need us alive,” Dick said. “Or they’re too chicken to kill us outright.”

The sentence sounded like Dick had spent much more energy in verbalising it than he currently had left in his body. Jason grunted in response, knees getting increasingly sore from all the crawling he was doing.

“The good news,” he announced, “is I’m mostly sure there aren’t any cameras or listening devices.”

“Meaning they left us here to die,” Dick finished.

“Yeah, most likely.”

“You got trackers on you?”

Jason snorted. “You shittin’ me? I stick ‘em on random cars and brothel walls the second I find ‘em.”

Dick sighed. “Will th’s ‘xperi’nce make y’ rethink tha’?” he asked.

“Don’t tell me you’ve got trackers on you that you’ve been keeping quiet about trackers this whole time,” Jason said, mostly to keep Dick talking. He couldn’t see anything beyond the shine off of a boot, and it was making him more tense than he’d thought it would.

“Nah, crushed,” Dick told him. “But… sent out a distress sign’l bef’re they knocked me out.”

“So they’ll find our corpses,” Jason said. “Hey, keep pressure on the wound!”

Jason couldn’t see it, but he could tell Dick was smiling as he said, “Hey, ‘f it c’mes down t’ it, I give y’ permission t’ eat me.”

“Oh, that’ll go well.” There was a rough line on the roof that was different to the usual bumps. Jason probed at it a little, following it. He was definitely getting Tim on board a quest to make brighter glowsticks. “The brat’ll kill me before I can even _try_ to make a run for it.”

It wasn’t just wishful thinking – there really was a rough square outline in the ceiling. The only issue was, it had something incredibly heavy on top of it, because it wasn’t budging at all, even with Jason pushing his shoulders into it with all he had.

This was where the dripping was coming from; Jason had hoped it was from a leaky pipe, since that came with a certain number of escape routes. Just as he turned to tell Dick, he realised he hadn’t heard a response.

“Dickface?” Jason called, making a rather significant amount of splashing as he scrambled over to where he’d left Dick.

It was an eerily similar situation to when he’d woken up, only this time he knew that there was pretty much no chance of waking Dick up unless they got rescued sometime soon.

He felt Dick’s pulse again, and cursed under his breath. Jason pressed against the wound, but this time there was even less reaction than there’d been before.

“If you don’t wake your lazy ass up _now_ , I’ll make fucking sure B replaces my shrine with a Nightwing one,” he threatened as he settled against the wall.

Jason had nothing in his pockets that was explosive, and even if he had, they wouldn’t have stood a chance at surviving the blast at such close quarters. And there was no lifting that hatch from inside. The best they could hope for now was a rescue.

But the last time Jason had been in dire need of being rescued, he’d fucking _died_.

Now _Jason_ found himself counting slowly, circling through his range of languages every ten numbers. One hand was on Dick’s pulse point, and the other pressed over the wound. But Jason wasn’t in perfect health; the headache he’d been pushing back had finally gotten to the point where he couldn’t ignore it anymore. There was no way he didn’t have a concussion, but it was impossible to hold his eyes open.

* * *

Jason came to aggressively, in a thrash of arms and legs. He tried opening his eyes, but the piercing white light of wherever he was almost knocked him back out again. There was something holding his lower body down, and his subconscious did its absolute best to kick it off—

“Jay, you’re okay,” a rumbling voice said. Jason didn’t know why it made him simultaneously feel safer and guarded. “Just breathe, okay? I’m going to dim the lights now, so you can open your eyes.”

The pressure on his eyelids decreased, and Jason squinted, blinking a little as his eyes adjusted. He was in the Cave, because of course he was. And the voice was Bruce.

But Bruce being there must mean that—

“Dick?” he demanded, fighting to sit upright. Surely Bruce wouldn’t be here with him if Dick was still down, which meant that Dick was either doing better than him – extremely unlikely – or dead.

Jason’s breathing had apparently picked up, because Bruce was trying to talk him through calming exercises. He didn’t even know he was subconsciously following Bruce’s words until the tight clenching in his chest gradually went away.

“…out two three four.” Bruce studied him, face impassive. Then he nodded at something past Jason. “Dick’s right there.”

One of the other cots had been dragged closer, with a chair in the middle of them. On the other cot was Dick, with a blood bag – among _many_ other devices – attached to him.

“He’s going to be fine,” Bruce said. “He almost lost too much blood, but we got there in time.” The words were said mechanically, as though Bruce had been repeating it to himself a number of times.

“How long?” Jason rasped. Now that the adrenaline spike was wearing off, all he wanted was a shower and hot food. And then maybe to wait for Dick to come round so he could punch him.

“You were in there for approximately twelve hours,” Bruce said with a grimace. “We didn’t realise they’d taken you until four hours in—”

“Dick’s distress beacon,” Jason interjected.

“It didn’t come through for a long time, and even then it wasn’t reliable. Tim was working on it nonstop.” Bruce sank back down into the chair, face weary. “You’ve been here for about three hours. You have a concussion, which you’d probably already guessed.”

Jason nodded.

Bruce seemed to be stumbling over his words, as though he wanted to say a great deal of things but couldn’t find a way to verbalise them properly. “I—You should go upstairs, get cleaned up. I know you don’t like being in the Manor, Jay, but I’d—if you could—Alfred would appreciate it if you stayed until you’re out of the woods.”

Jason exhaled, legs shaking a little as he stood. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

Bruce’s shoulders relaxed slightly, and he nodded.

* * *

Jason silently walked down the stairs to the Cave a few hours and three giant servings later. He was fully prepared to sneak past Bruce (or rather, ignore the man until he gave up trying to talk to Jason) and escape back to his latest safehouse, when the sound of murmured words caught at his mind.

Bruce was still in that chair, with a book out and reading. That didn’t strike Jason as out of the ordinary, both because he’d been on the receiving end and because he’d witnessed it. What _was_ different was that Bruce would sometimes break off and make a comment. Jason couldn’t hear it from where he was eavesdropping, but he could tell by the change in Bruce’s tone.

He crept closer.

“…know you would’ve hated it, you always hated characters half hearing conversations and then jumping to conclusions.” Bruce rubbed the bridge of his nose, something he normally never did when he was around anyone. “This next chapter will make up for it, though. He doesn’t run off and make a fool of himself, don’t worry.”

He squeezed Dick’s hand and was about to continue reading when Jason decided to make his presence known.

“You said he was going to be okay,” Jason accused. It was only after the words had come out of his mouth that he realised how _Damian_ they’d been. Like a _child_.

“He is,” Bruce said, not jumping in the slightest.

Jason moved closer, until he was standing on the other side of Dick’s cot. “You sound like you’re reading to his corpse.”

Bruce exhaled deeply. “He should’ve woken hours ago.”

Jason shrugged. “So he’s tired. Maybe he hadn’t slept in a while.” He paused to look at Bruce. “Maybe _you_ should get some sleep.”

Bruce was shaking his head before Jason had even finished talking. “No, I need to be here, in case—”

“ _I’ll_ be here, okay?” Jason interrupted. “Sticking around to ream him out, might as well be right next to him when he wakes up, right?”

Bruce looked at him, clearly trying to hide his surprise, and stood abruptly, offering his chair to Jason. “Call me if he wakes up,” he said. “Or if anything changes.”

Jason nodded, swinging his legs up onto the cot.

He wouldn’t end up shouting at Dick when he woke up, for following him despite Jason telling him not to, for not rubbing it in Jason’s face when the number of thugs was triple the amount they’d gone in expecting, for going and getting himself stabbed and then almost dying. Or for making him not-worry enough to stay in the Manor for almost a day or so, finishing off Dick’s share of Alfred’s last batch of pastries and ribbing Tim when the kid looked maudlin.

But for now, he grabbed the book Bruce had left behind and settled in to make filthy enough comments that Dick’s sense of virtue would make him wake up.

**Author's Note:**

> idk how much of this fulfils 'kidnapped' instead of 'hostage' so i'm going to pretend that they were held there while the kidnappers tried to negotiate w batman.
> 
> my bingo card is in the series description if anyone wants to request a square ^~^
> 
> thanks for reading!!!! come talk to me on [tumblr](https://fanfictiongreenirises.tumblr.com/)


End file.
